“Spanning five centuries, Peacock is an eye-popping look at a royal-family legacy. It uses video, audio and room-filling installations, along with dozens of fantastically detailed paintings (magnifying glasses are provided so you can study them closely), to immerse you in its world.” —Michael Upchurch, Crosscut

“’Art is information as much as it is something inexplicable,’ Bustillo said. ‘When we look at it, we have an emotional and a visceral reaction, but it is not removed from the way we’ve been conditioned to process information.’”

It’s a Halloween tradition! To all you ghouls and goblins, I present: The Pumpkin Dance.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Manager of Public Relations

Image: His Highness Maharaja GajSingh II of Marwar-Jodhpur and Baijilal Shivranjani Rajye of Marwar-Jodhpur in Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India at Seattle Art Museum, 2018, photo: Stephanie Fink.

“These African masks, African jewelry, African clothes—made to be worn by fictional figures who run a fictional institute that deals with things like Empathy Deficit Disorder, and made to exist in real and virtual spaces—now have, for young and old Americans, a mainstream point of reference.”

I can’t believe it’s almost July. Seattle Magazine has great picks for cultural happenings next month, including an upcoming show at the Henry featuring Figuring History artist Mickalene Thomas as photographer, designer, and curator.

“I may need to lie down.” Yes, the art world and everyone else recently went—well, you know—when Beyoncé and Jay-Z released a new joint album and a video shot at the Louvre. Artnet has a good round-up on the mania.

The Stranger launched their new format last week! The art section’s lead story was on Latent Home Zero by Christopher Paul Jordan at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which closes today—so head over there!

“Equal parts historian and visionary, Jordan uses the overlapping histories of land use, urban planning, and displacement in Tacoma as a microcosm to address the whole history of black migration across the United States. ‘We’ve been everywhere,’ says Jordan. ‘Urban space, rural space, but with every generation comes a new form of displacement, mass migration, and exclusion. Take a step back, how do we take agency of how we construct our belonging away from our homeland?’”

City Arts gets on our level: Priya Frank, SAM’s Associate Director of Community Programs, was interviewed for the October edition of Taste Test. #Radbassador

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Michael Upchurch reviewsHumaira Abid: Searching for Home at Bellevue Art Museum, noting that the sculptor “hits a new peak, combining technical prowess with fierce vision to produce charged political drama.”

“’So many of the shows she did were not just great shows but reframed art history,’ said Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s current director. ‘Thelma was instrumental in making possible the whole rethinking of not just African-American art but American art.’”

A window is what I wanted. A gap in the wall where light could come in and color the dim room of my world and hopefully the world of those around me. But how do you crack open a wall of bias and expectation? How do you get to the human behind the facade? The goal with Color is Everything was this very idea; to find the bridge from one person to another, a path through the forest of differences so we can embrace what makes the individual truly and beautifully individual. Longing, pain, love, desire; So much binds us to one another beyond things like religion, gender choice, or race. I wanted to photograph individuals that not only celebrated what made them unique but even further—used that as a source of their power. But differences scare people. So often we see something unlike what we understand and it is seen as dumb, threatening or foolish. That is why I attempted to open the window of joy in all the people who participated in the project. I wanted their joy to shine brighter than anything an observer could find bias against. Because in a time of cultural tension, amongst all the things that bind us, why not choose joy to let some light in?

To do so was not hard. It was a simple recipe of music, dancing, and kindness. Lindsey Watkins helped choose the wardrobe from the outfits the individuals brought from their own closets. From that we chose color combinations in the backdrops. It wasn’t until later that I was honored to be put in touch with Imani Sims who took the project to the next step of tapping into the actual recipe of what gave everyone their own personal joy. When given the opportunity to exhibit the project I knew that scale was important. Joy, no matter what the recipe, is not small, it is a force writ large against the darkness and I wanted the joy of these amazing individuals to be imposing and fully immersive.

This project was co-curated by David Rue and Priya Frank of Seattle Art Museum.